Although it’s called spring cleaning, the end of the summer holidays is just as good a time as any to sort through your belongings and give the house a freshening up.
Perhaps we could all take a leaf out of Marie Kondo’s ground-breaking book ‘The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up’. Marie Kondo is a Japanese organisational consultant who takes tidying to a whole new level; she promises that if you properly declutter your home once, you’ll never have to do it again. She has been called ‘the most organised woman in the world’ and has waiting lists of up to 3 months for a consultation with her with customers travelling from across the globe to meet her!
Similarly, James Wallman has investigated the effects of having too much ‘stuff’ in his fascinating book, Stuffocation, and he discusses how sorting through your belongings isn’t only good for your house, it’s also good for your health! His book looks into the effects of clutter and how it affects us when we have too much ‘stuff’. Stuffocation discusses how our move into materialism has changed us and he states: ‘We have more stuff than we could ever need – clothes we don’t wear, kit we don’t use and toys that we don’t play with. But having everything we thought we wanted isn’t making us happier. It’s bad for the planet. It’s cluttering up our homes. It’s making us feel ‘stuffocated’ and stressed’.
So this summer, why not take on your home and maybe even change your life? You don’t need to tackle everything at once, or even a whole room at a time, see how much time you have and take it on a project by project basis. There’s nothing worse than starting something, having to go out and then coming home later to the mess you made trying to tidy up!
We asked our team here at Masons Self Storage for some of their top spring cleaning tips to help you find a little bit of your own life changing magic this summer!
- A good start to any spring clean is your wardrobe! Sort through your clothes and into two piles: what fits and what doesn’t! From there you can decide what makes you feel comfortable, what has a hole in it or you can’t even remember the last time you wore it.
- Don’t feel like everything has to go in the bin! Decide what is rubbish from what can go down to your local charity shop, what you might need later and can go into storage until then and what can be sold online on a site like eBay, Gumtree or Preloved.
- Get the kids involved! Make it into a game and get them to sort through which toys they still play with and which no longer interests them.
- Before you start a new project, assess how much time it will take and how much time you have, if you have a full afternoon, why not take on the living room? If you only have a spare hour, why not just wipe down the forgotten spots in your usual cleaning routine such as the doors of your kitchen cabinets, windowsills and skirting boards?
- One of the best feelings in the world is settling into bed with clean bedding on, increase that feeling by 100 by taking the time to wash your duvet and pillows too! Whilst the duvet is in the washing machine, why not take a minute to hoover your mattress and clean any spots or stains, leaving your bed with that really clean feeling.
Of course, a spring clean is big task and if you’re not quite ready to let go of everything straight away have no fear! Many people turn to us here at Masons Self Storage and take advantage of our flexible storage solutions and 24 hours a day, 365 days a year accessibility for storing their clutter, which can be a great solution to help you make the transition to living with less!